Photographing Myth
Latchkey Kids' Year of Summers
We all have our personal mythologies, those stories that we tell ourselves of our pasts that may not have happened exactly as we remember but nevertheless play a large part in our understanding of how we, as individuals, fit into the world. Just like the societies of the past used myths to conceptualize natural phenomenon or to justify their philosophical organizations of the universe, we use our personal myths, of love or grief or pride or failure, to locate ourselves in the grander story of everything around us. Often, it takes time for these myths to form in our heads, as we retell the same story over and over, smoothing and sculpting it to the shape most useful to us, like the ancients’ myths past down through oral tradition changing with each telling to fit the occasion. Sometimes we too share our personal myths, so that someone else might better understand how we came to be, in front of them, a collection of stories. The people closest to us are often those we create our mythologies alongside, to be reminisced in the future, God willing.
But what if you could write the personal myth in the moment, as it happened, knowing it too be soon to be a myth? What if Orpheus had sat down right after Eurydice disappeared and wrote a song that we might we still have today, that we could hear that mythical sorrow first hand? How would the story be different if Odysseus had written it on the boat sailing back to Ithaca? What does it mean to know a story in one’s life will be important, not years down the road, but in the moment, recognizing the the weight of that experience as it is happening? I, personally, struggle with this – only in far hindsight do I understand how my past shapes who I am today. But others can grasp that knowledge instantly, writing their myth in real time, telling the story as the story unfolds in front of them.
In September 2024, I my friend Hanny asked me to photograph his band Latchkey Kids as they recorded their new album. I agreed and photographed two days of that new to me, grueling and explosive artistic process of studio recording. I’ve waited until the album was officially out to share these pictures (and waited a little longer to figure out what I wanted to say). Year of Summers is out now and I think Hanny, Joey, and Cyle are truly writing their myth, for us all to hear and share in and enjoy and learn from, as it happens in front of them.
